Starting Something

Through watching the one show on Monday, I was given the name of a Scottish artist who I knew about, but just completely forgotten the name of. Through that show, I found out the artist was called Paul Cadden, and he is by far one of my favourite drawing artists.

Caddens work is within a genre called "Hyperrealism". Hyperrealism is a genre of painting, drawing and sculpture resembling a high-resolution photograph. Hyperrealism is considered an advancement of Photorealism by the methods used to create the resulting paintings, drawings or sculptures. This is something which I am a long way from achieving, but it is artists who work in this way that inspire me to improve not only the overall look of my artworks, but also to improve the methods which I use within the creation of the work. Artists that work in this way, as well as Cadden, include Chuck Close, Robert Bechtle and Ralph Goings.

Below you can see an example of some of Cadden's work.

As you can see from the above, the images resemble a photograph in their realism and their intensity, but the images are created using pencils, in fact exactly the same pencils which I use. Cadden also uses the same technique to replicate the photograph that I do, by using a grid system, which then makes it easier to accurately replicate an image, especially when working one a larger scale than that of the image you are working for.

The most interesting thing that I heard from listening to Paul Cadden speak, was when asked "Aren’t you just copying from a photograph?" his response was "Aren't photographers copying from life" and I believe this is a very interesting point to make for anyone who works from a photograph to create work. To find out more about Paul Cadden's work, click here.

Through seeing Paul Cadden’s work again, this has inspired me to create some work for myself, but not only to create a drawing, but to look at how that drawing is created, and looking into every aspect of my drawing with a lot more detail, time care and attention in order to create a more realistic image. So, I have decided to look back at the idea of celebrity and idolisation to look at someone who I have been listening to ALOT over the past year, Ed Sheeran. Ed is a singer/songwriter who has been my music of choice for a long while now...and as of yet, I have not created a study of him.

Today I started this drawing, and just under 4 hours in, I have created a basic outline, to which I am going to begin working into. I expect this study to be complete in 2-3 weeks, but I am hoping to update this page a lot more often, so keep checking back for updates on my progress.

Below is the image I will be working from: